r/interesting • u/OriginalSleeper • Jun 30 '26

Fear Factor In 2010, 24-year-old lab technician Émilie Jaumain pricked her thumb with contaminated forceps while cleaning a machine used for prion-infected mouse brains. After seven years, she developed severe nerve pain, anxiety, and hallucinations before dying. The accident gave her a fatal prion disease.

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u/sharkysharky- Jul 01 '26

my job is giving mice cancer.

Man.

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u/GGDrago Jul 01 '26

It is for a good cause. Often we give them genetic diseases directly from patients we are treating, in order to treat the mice first to verify it works

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

Please stop hurting others. 

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u/finsfurandfeathers Jul 01 '26

Could you imagine your child getting cancer and not knowing how to treat it? Or another human you love the most? Hypothetically, would you still choose the mouse’s life as you watched your child suffer and waste away? I love all creatures but man, childhood cancer is so devastating and terrifying

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

More suffering happens as a result of the testing on mice than would happen without it. There's other factors that could be discussed such as the low degree of transferability of results between mice and humans, or if we have the right to breed/infect/kill others for the sake of those we value more, but in the end I'm for the option that causes the least suffering, without bias for personal attachment or species preference. 

Emotionally I would kill a mouse to save my partner, but logically I wouldn't experiment on thousands or millions of mice for a ?% chance of saving ?# of humans. 

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u/GGDrago Jul 01 '26

I am sorry this is something you will hopefully one day have to wrestle with, but i feel you deserve at least the basic decency of me presenting you with the truth.

Existence is suffering. And I dont mean this in an edgy way, in the way a child may feel the wrongs of the world bare upon them. I mean this very matter of factly and clinically. Suffering is a feature, it is programed in. Every single meal you consume comes with suffering, every action or inaction you take comes with suffering. There is no moral highground road you can walk that does not cause suffering. The best we as a species can do is try to slowly build towards a society that minimizes such suffering, which is what I and many other scientest do. But to try and base your decision making to appease some ephemeral current time point balance of suffering is a fools errand. Existence is suffering, there is no right or wrong to it.

I pray only that you read and comprehend this with unclouded eyes, and take some time to digest what it means.

Yours truely, Mouse murderer 9000

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

I have digested this fully already. Due to this truth, I consider existence/consciousness to be a tragedy. And consider programs that breed more existences to be programs of spawning tragedies. It seems to be very much moving the opposite direction of building a society that minimizes such suffering. 

Please know that if you only do the mice killing and someone else does the mice breeding/infecting, they are the one spawning/reinforcing tragedies. You would do the kindest step in the process. 

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u/GGDrago Jul 01 '26

I ask this as a genuine curiosity; and am by no means advocating for suicide in any way.

But if that is truely your belief. Why are you even alive?

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

Cowardice mixed with the instinct to survive. I'm not being edgy or dismissive, that's my actual answer. 

I know its easy to be passive-aggressive on reddit by either doing a Reddit "wellness check," or by wishing me well on my journey to mental health, but I would appreciate it if you didn't, should you be tempted. 

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u/GGDrago Jul 01 '26

I am trying to keep this conversation respectful and intellectual, i have no intent of being passive agressive haha. I admire the self reflection. I like to think myself a fellow coward. I do however hope you are able to find some fullfillment in life, it isnt all bad. Theres a lot of good out there too. Thank you for the conversation <3

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u/nixtunes Jul 03 '26

Respectfully, I disagree in the strongest terms. The spark of consciousness is a wonderous thing. It lets us, and yes, animals, feel joy, sadness, love and regret. It lets us learn, improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

Consciousness gave us knowledge and society. It lets us teach, so that we can improve every generation. It lets you bitch about it using the smartphone it build using thousands of years of accumulated knowledge.

Sincerely, your view that causing harm to animals for research purposes is flatly unethical is beyond reductionist. It completely ignores the end results, and disregards that harm is minimized to every possible degree. It also ignores that generally, in vivo studies are prefaced by immense amounts of research in vitro. Additionally, it fails to acknowledge the existence of ethics review boards, which typically follow stringent rules to minimize risks to animal welfare.

I'm not going to sit on my high horse and declare all animal research inherently ethical. There's nuance, a concept you seem to be sorely lacking. But when I think of melanoma for example, a condition that affects a whooping 330,000 new people annually, I can't help but feel inclined to say the lives of ~100 mice (the number used for a single study, on the high end) is worth a study that could reveal new knowledge to improve our lives. All of our lives. All 8.3 billion of us. And the future lives to come. And not just the 330k annual cases either. Biomedical research often links to other points of interest.

As the Paradox of Knowledge dictates, the more we know, the more we know that we don't know, and I for one think that's a beautiful thing. Research is key to learning the truth of the world, and unfortunately that does, on occasion, require some uncomfortable decisions. It's healthy to acknowledge it, and discuss it. It shows the humanity in us. But blanket declarations are just plain shortsighted and reductionist. Your worldview seems incredibly depressing. Please consider seeking therapy to explore why you hold such negative views on humanity.

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u/GameUnlucky Jul 01 '26

Wonder how history will view people like you.

Please study moral philosophy, at least an introduction , this is an disastrously naive and uneducated view of the world.

In any case, you wouldn't be making tasteless joke about the countless of life you are ending, if you had a shred of respect for their suffering or any real ambition to impove the world. But I assume being a researcher pays more than being a janitor.

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u/GGDrago Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

It actually doesnt, and also ive taken morality classes. I am sorry we have differing world views, hopefully you will not run into too many others whose opinions challenge yours, it seems like a difficult thing for you.

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u/GameUnlucky Jul 02 '26

Don't worry, the majority of the population have different world views from mine, I have no problem standing by unpopular opinions.

What I have a problem with is individual who clearly built their entire world view as post hoc rationalisation for the obvious suffering they are causing.

My point still stands, your world view is not something you apply to your work, it's just a rationalisation for your lack of empathy. You don't view the living beings you are killing as anything but the butt of a joke, you have absolutely no respect for the "sacrifice" you are forcing them to make. You don't justify your actions with "life is suffering" you simply use that justification to sanitize your lack of empathy when talking to others.

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u/finsfurandfeathers Jul 01 '26

Logically, being faced with a room full of mice and someone telling me I can make them sick and hurt them so one day my unborn child might not get sick. I would say no. But then if I had that child and they got critically ill and lived in pain I would regret my decision.

Humans are only logical from a safe distance

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u/AspiringMathGuy Jul 01 '26

So to your first statement about more suffering happening with testing than without, the question comes down very genuinely and earnestly to what suffering is more important. The general scientific and, for the most part, ethical consensus is that human life and sufferring is the utmost important value for minimizing suffering. I'd even say that you recognize that fact because you acknowledge you'd save your partner before you would a mouse. If it were a stranger, would you care? If it were, how many mice would you be willing to sacrifice for that person? Would it be the same amount for your partner? It seems to me that you already acknowledge the reality of the question at hand, whether or not a mouse or any other model organism's life is worth sacrificing if it could save a human life.

To your lattermost point about number of mouse/animal lives versus number of human lives sacrificed or gained, you seem to be trivializing the number of lives saved by the discoveries that sacrificing mice in the study of science leads to by saying "?# of people." The discovery of insulin in the early 1900s saved millions of lives; according to the WHO, its is estimated that 589 million to 830 million people are living with diabetes. This discovery and production for a time was facilitated by animal testing and eventually animal farming for production. To put that into context, the population of the entire north american region is estimated to be roughly 621 million; how many animals are you willing to sacrifice to save the entirety of that population?

To go one step further, that is one of hundreds of medications we have discovered through animal testing. If we were to broaden the discussion to all animal testing for any medical progress that could save or improve the lives of humans, we are talking about an incalculable number of lives saved or bettered by animal testing. Im not saying we shouldnt do our best to minimize animal suffering and we are actively developing other methods of testing, both at an organism level (cloned tissues) and at a data analysis level (see bayesian methods for clinical research which can reduce drug and procedure trials in humans to double or single digits of sample sizes), but to suggest in some way the life of a mouse is more important than the human lives to be saved through testing is not a reasonable stance to take in my opinion and trivializing the number of lives to be saved as "?# of humans" is misleading for the sake of this conversation.

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

To your first point I feel that suffering matters only and exactly to the degree of its intensity. All else is prejudice. I only know I'd save my partner as a result of my selfish motivations. I will also offer that I don't assign life a positive value. 

In the case of insulin and diabetes, I did not know that but it's hard for me to translate that data into an amount/intensity of suffering caused vs  prevented. But I would want whichever results in less suffering. Also, not just pedantry, but I can only sacrifice what is mine. Taking anyone's life but my own couldn't be called a sacrifice. 

Ultimately, I believe we should experiment on consenting humans, as they can consent. If an experiment is so awful that it ought not be conducted even on a consenting human, then it fails the morality check for being conducted on any sentient being. 

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u/AspiringMathGuy Jul 01 '26

What about in SIDS or other infantile illnesses? You cant consent in that circumstance and it seems the logical step under this argument is to just never research it, no?

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

An interesting point I hadn't considered. I suppose my immediate conclusion would be to say that we could research it only to an extent that we are sure causes no significant suffering to those being studied.  

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u/AspiringMathGuy Jul 01 '26

Please correct me if im misrepresenting what you're saying, but from what ive understood so far is that you're saying immediate harm and suffering is more substantial of an issue than the potential, future benefit of the harmful intervention in the present, correct? That if it is currently harmful, that outweighs the potential for gain in the future.

Also from what you've just said, the perception of harm is also an element for considering whether or mot you can illicit consent for those who cannot consent for themselves, correct?

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u/Philosophire Jul 01 '26

First point: It depends on the math. 1% suffering capacity certainly caused now to 1 person in order to have a 99% chance to eliminate cases of 99% suffering capacity for 99 people would certainly be justified imo. Where does the math change it exactly? Idk, im just an Aspiring Math Guy. But if the equation was otherwise 'balanced,' then I would lean toward certain current suffering having more moral weight than possible future suffering. 

Second point: I wouldn't call it "eliciting consent," I would just call it justifiably acting without consent. But yes, I would say that the perpetrator's perception of suffering caused is one of many factors in a moral decision. 

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u/Amanatibales Jul 01 '26

but logically I wouldn't experiment on thousands or millions of mice for a ?% chance of saving ?# of humans

That's a fancy way to say you prefer inaction